 Signing of the treaty byLord Elgin andPrince Gong | |
| Type | Unequal treaty |
|---|---|
| Signed | 24 October 1860 (Anglo–Chinese) 25 October 1860 (Franco-Chinese) 14 November 1860 (Russo-Chinese) |
| Location | Beijing, China |
| Signatories | |
| Parties | |
| Convention of Peking | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 北京條約 | ||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 北京条约 | ||||||||||||||
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TheConvention of Peking orFirst Convention of Peking is an agreement comprising three distinctunequal treaties concluded between theQing dynasty of China and Great Britain,France, and theRussian Empire in 1860.
On 18 October 1860, at the culmination of theSecond Opium War, the British and French troops entered theForbidden City inPeking. Following the decisive defeat of the Chinese,Prince Gong was compelled to sign two treaties on behalf of the Qing government withLord Elgin andBaron Gros, who represented Britain and France respectively.[1] Although Russia had not been a belligerent, Prince Gong also signed a treaty withNikolay Ignatyev.
The original plan was to burn down the Forbidden City as punishment for the mistreatment of Anglo-French prisoners by Qing officials. Because doing so would jeopardize the treaty signing, the plan shifted to burning theOld Summer Palace andSummer Palace instead.[1] The treaties with France and Britain were signed in theMinistry of Rites building immediately south of the Forbidden City on 24 October 1860.[2]
In the convention, theXianfeng Emperor ratified theTreaty of Tientsin (1858).
In 1860, the area known asKowloon was originally negotiated for lease in March, but in few months' time, the Convention of Peking ended the lease, and ceded the land formally to the British on 24 October.[3]
Article 6 of the Convention between China and the United Kingdom stipulated that China was to cede the part of Kowloon Peninsula south of present-dayBoundary Street,Kowloon, andHong Kong (includingStonecutters Island) in perpetuity to Britain.[4]
Article 6 of the Convention between China and France stipulated that "the religious and charitable establishments which were confiscated from Christians during the persecutions of which they were victims shall be returned to their owners through the French Minister in China".[5]
The treaty also confirmed the cession of the entirety of what is now known asOuter Manchuria to the Russian Empire, a total of 400,000 square kilometers,[6] with Russia achieving the strategic goal of sealing off Chinese access to theSea of Japan. It granted Russia the right to theUssuri krai, a part of the modern dayPrimorye, the territory that corresponded with the ancientManchu province ofEast Tartary. SeeTreaty of Aigun (1858),Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) andSino-Russian border conflicts.[citation needed]
In addition to ceding territory that had been ruled by the Qing dynasty, the treaty also ceded territory underKorean jurisdiction, notably the island (by that time and currently a peninsula at the southernmost end ofPrimorsky Krai) ofNoktundo. This was not known to the Koreans until the 1880s (20 or so years after the signing of the treaty, to which Korea was not a party), at which point it became a matter of official protest as the Koreans asserted that the Qing had no authority to cede Noktundo to Russia.
According to the Institute of Qing History the ceding of territory which created the modernborder between Russia and North Korea and blocks China's access to theSea of Japan was caused as a result of mismanagement during the demarcation process: Article 1 of the 1860 Sino-Russian Peking Convention stipulates that the southeastern section of the Sino-Russian eastern border "...from the mouth of the Bailing River along the mountains to the mouth of the Hubutu River, and then from the mouth of the Hubutu River along theHunchun River and the ridge between the sea to the mouth of the Tumen River, the east belongs to Russia; the west belongs to China." In 1861, Chinese and Russian representatives signed the "Sino-Russian Eastern Boundary Agreement: (Chinese:中俄勘分東界約記), in which the border between the two countries is on the east bank of the Tumen River estuary and the Sea of Japan. The coast from the north-eastern bank of the lower reaches of the Tumen River to the coast of the Sea of Japan still belongs to China, where China separates Russia and Korea through the 3km wide Japanese coast.[7] However, the "Border Map from the Ussuri River to the Sea" (Chinese:烏蘇里江至海交界記文) document handed to China by Russia in 1862 shows that the border between the two countries is 20km north of the Tumen River estuary. This omission was allegedly caused by the director of theMinistry of Revenue Cheng Qi, who was serving as the special Chinese envoy for Sino-Russian border survey in 1861. Cheng Qi was addicted to opium and went to nearbyJilin City to replenish his drug stash, and entrusted the establishment of theborder markers entirely to the Russian survey representatives. The Russian side took the opportunity to unilaterally draw a boundary map, thereby connecting Russia and theKorean Peninsula across the Tumen River, gaining a foothold for invading Korea, and blocking China's passage to the Sea of Japan through the Tumen River. Cheng Qi was shortly fired from all official posts after the incident.[7]
The governments of theUnited Kingdom and thePeople's Republic of China (PRC) concluded theSino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong in 1984, under which the sovereignty of the leased territories, together withHong Kong Island, ceded under theTreaty of Nanking (1842), andKowloon Peninsula (south ofBoundary Street), was to be transferred to the PRC on 1 July 1997.
The status ofNoktundo, which had been under Korean jurisdiction from the turn of the 17th century but was (unbeknownst to the Koreans until the 1880s) ceded to Russia in the treaty, remains formally unresolved, as only one of two Korean jurisdictions/governments have accepted a border agreement with Russia.[8] North Korea and the USSR signed a border treaty in 1985 officially certifying the Russian-North Korean border as running through the center of theTumen River[9] which left the now-peninsula of Noktundo on the Russian side of the border. This agreement is not recognized by South Korea, which has since demanded Noktundo's return to Korean jurisdiction (ostensibly this would be North Korean jurisdiction, with the expectation of unified Korean control after an eventual Korean reunification).[10]
An original copy of the convention is located in theNational Palace Museum inTaiwan.[11]
